Aditya Kane 2:16 pm on July 3, 2026
Tags: handbooks, highlight ( 17 )

Proposal: Restructure the Community Team handbooks

The handbooks landing page is one of the most-linked-to pages we have.

A lot of our conversations on SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/ and email are pointing to handbook pages.

The current list is a flat list and nine headings or sections. The education handbook is missing. It is difficult to learn which handbook is relevant where, especially for new contributors to the community team.

Current state

The landing page today:

Community Team Handbook
Community Team Supporter and Manager Handbook
MeetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. Organizer Handbook
WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. Organizer Handbook
Innovative WordPress Events Handbook (temporary)
Contributor Events Organizer Handbook
KidsCamp Organizer Handbook
Online Events Handbook
Incident Response Team Handbook

I am suggesting a revamp of the way we structure our handbooks and also help community members work better to navigate with tools and processes. Also it would be easier to onboard people contextually.

Part 1: Proposal to restructure the landing page

Group the nine handbooks into three sections by audience and purpose.

Each section gets a short description so people know whether they’re in the right place before clicking.

Make Community Team

For the people who run and support the Community Team itself.

Community Team Handbook (overview of MeetupsMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook., Events, WordCamps, WPCC and Credits and supporter roles like Event Supporters, Program Supports, Program Managers )
Incident Response Team Handbook
Education Program Team Handbook

Local Events Organizers

For anyone planning or running a WordPress event in their community.

Meetup Organizer Handbook
WordCamp Organizer Handbook
WordPress Campus Connect Handbook
Online Events Handbook
KidsCamp Organizer Handbook

Resource Handbooks

Reference material for people supporting events.

Sponsor Handbook
Speaker Handbook
Volunteer Handbook

The Sponsor and Speaker handbooks don’t currently exist as standalone documents. This content lives buried inside the WordCamp Organizer Handbook.

It would be good to have them as proper standalone handbooks.

Also should we add a one-page handbook for volunteers? so all WP event organizers can send it to their volunteers when they’ve been accepted?

Here is a mockup I created using some AI tools for representational purposes. (it is missing the Education program parts as it was based of current layout)

Part 2: Restructure the Community Team Handbook chapters

The Community Team Handbook is the most-used. The current chapter list is a bit flat and the names don’t always match what’s inside. I’d propose this outline:

Event Vetting
Event Orientations
Setting Up Meetups
Setting Up Events
Team Chats
Team Goals
Community Team Dir
Tools
- Google Apps Email
- HelpScout
- Finance Tools
  - QuickBooks
Trademark FAQs

Can we add an invitation on the first page of each handbook to take the relevant learn.wordpress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ course for self training?

For example, invite new contributors to take the training, etc.

What I’m asking for

I’d like around three Event Supporters to join me as a working group to ship parts 1 and 2.

The work breaks down into four chunks:

Audit. Go through each handbook and list what’s outdated, what’s missing, what’s duplicated across handbooks, and what should move where. This is the foundation everything else builds on.
Restructure. Finalize the chapter outline above (open to changes — the version in this post is a starting point) and migrate existing content into the new structure.
Publish. Fill the gaps. The Sponsor and Speaker handbooks need to be written and published as standalone documents. Any other gaps the audit surfaces get filled here.
Maintain. Define a lightweight review process and maybe have a rotating Docs Working Group.

Timeline

Six to eight weeks of work, with twelve as a hard ceiling. I’d rather we ship something solid than let this drag through a long unstructured stretch.

Weeks 1–2 — Audit. The working group meets, divides handbooks, and produces the audit document.
Weeks 3–5 — Restructure. Finalize the outline, migrate content, build the landing page.
Weeks 6–7 — Publish. Sponsor and Speaker handbooks drafted and published. Final review.
Week 8 — Launch. New landing page goes live.
Week 9 onward — Docs Working Group takes over with a quarterly review cycle.

Open questions for the team

A few things I’d specifically like input on before kicking off:

Is the two-section grouping the right cut, or are there handbooks I’ve put in the wrong section?
The “Innovative WordPress Events Handbook (temporary)” from 2023 is still active? Maybe we could turn it into a one-page handbook for “Other types of WP events”, and to add there the info about other types of events: Do_Actiondo_action do_action hackathons are community-organised events that are focussed on using WordPress to give deserving charitable organisations their own online presence. Learn more on doaction.org., WP Women Days, etc..
Is there prior work on a Sponsor or Speaker handbook I should pick up from rather than starting fresh?
Anyone already working on related cleanup I should coordinate with?

How to respond

If you’re an Event SupporterEvent Supporter Event Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues., Program SupporterProgram Supporter Community Program Supporters (formerly Deputies) are a team of people worldwide who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about program supporters in our Program Supporter Handbook. or Program ManagerProgram Manager Program Managers (formerly Super Deputies) are Program Supporters who can perform extra tasks on WordCamp.org like creating new sites and publishing WordCamps to the schedule. who’d like to join the working group, drop a comment below or pingPing The act of sending a very small amount of data to an end point. Ping is used in computer science to illicit a response from a target server to test it’s connection. Ping is also a term used by Slack users to @ someone or send them a direct message (DM). Users might say something along the lines of “Ping me when the meeting starts.” me in #community-team on Slack or send me a DM on slack if you want to know more.

We will be focusing on being agile and quick to make changes, we rather ship these changes and then make regular updates – instead of trying to get everything right in one go.

I’ll close the call for volunteers by 17th July, 2026 and we’ll kick off the week after.

Props to @_dorsvenabili @unintended8 for peer review and adding suggestions.

#handbooks

#highlight

Luis Miguel Climent 2:53 pm on July 3, 2026

I think your proposal is great. It’s about time we reviewed and “improved” the Community Hanbooks. It’s not very easy to find a specific topic or guide someone in their search.
I’m leading WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. Valencia 2026 (Spain), and I’ll be very busy with the organization until November. If it weren’t for that, I’d volunteer to help.
- Aditya Kane 12:44 pm on July 13, 2026
  
  Thanks @lmcliment Good luck with WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. Valencia. When we get into the audit phase, a quick review pass from you would be very welcome, so we do not miss anything inadvertently.
Mainul Kabir Aion 2:59 pm on July 3, 2026

Count me in.
- Aditya Kane 12:44 pm on July 13, 2026
  
  Cool! Will pingPing The act of sending a very small amount of data to an end point. Ping is used in computer science to illicit a response from a target server to test it’s connection. Ping is also a term used by Slack users to @ someone or send them a direct message (DM). Users might say something along the lines of “Ping me when the meeting starts.” you on SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/ once the call closes on 17th July and we’ll kick off the week after.
Taco Verdonschot 3:09 pm on July 3, 2026

Part 1

Clearly structuring the handbooks by target audience sounds like a great idea!

Chapter or section title

In your proposal, you suggest the second chapter should be “Local Events Organizers”. However, I don’t think that heading covers them all. Instead, I’d like to argue that the title should read ‘Event organizers’ (so dropping the ‘local’ part). For example, Online MeetupsMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. are events, but not local. The same goes for some of the regional WordCamps.

Deduplication

By extracting ‘Sponsor handbook’, ‘Speaker handbook’, and ‘Volunteer handbook’, you’re already deduplicating information that could/would in the current situation be duplicated across the various event types.

But I’m wondering if we can go any further. Are there other sections in the handbooks that are duplicate or near-duplicate? Ideally, we’d have a single source of truth for all of the types of events.

That’s why I’d like to propose investigating whether changing the structure of the event handbook from separate handbooks to a single handbook that lists special cases/exceptions per subject would help deduplicate information and/or improve readability.

Example

In the meetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. handbook, we currently have a section about Event Formats. (Some of) the suggestions listed there are also great suggestions for WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. content.

Instead of duplicating this information to both handbooks, with minor changes, we could have a single Event format page that lists which formats are better suited for which type of event.

Part 2

Again, it sounds like a good idea to restructure this information, so that it becomes easier to understand each task, and/or every step of organizing an event.

Again, meetups are a type of event, so I wouldn’t single them out in the handbook. Make them a chapter or section in the ‘Setting up events’ section.

Other

I’m putting this here because I’m not sure if it should be listed under part 1 or part 2. What I think could be valuable when revisiting our approach to handbooks is to take a step back and consider who the handbook would be valuable for. I mean, it’s easy to focus on just those experienced in the community and contributing, but I think it’d be good to consider that we should also have a handbook for new event attendees. It would be great if we could make a first-time-attendee section aimed at first-time attendees, to help them understand what they can expect from the event. This has the potential to save a lot of duplicate information across the many individual WordCamp websites.
Alex Cuadra 3:11 pm on July 3, 2026

The proposal looks great. I would like to help with any of the steps. Also I was wondering if we could implement something like NotebookLM too (maybe is too challenging) Maybe this could help to organizers to get into the info quickly. But I think your proposal is really good for a better structure. Please count me in.
- Taco Verdonschot 3:14 pm on July 3, 2026
  
  Having a handbook MCP is a great idea!
  I think it would be beyond the scope of this proposal, but if none exists yet, you should totally file a metaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. ticket on TracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. for this!
  
  And, in the rewriting, it wouldn’t hurt to take a few extra minutes to get the page structure right (for accessibilityAccessibility Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility), SEO, and AI). That also makes a huge difference.
  - Aditya Kane 12:48 pm on July 13, 2026
    
    @alexcu21 I agree, I think a NotebookLM / MCP usage could be a great idea – but it probably need a lot more thinking and discussion.
    
    Also it would mean a MetaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. ticket. So out of scope of this to kickoff.
    
    I’m not adding SEO or AI-readability as explicit goals – but it would be good aim be well aware of proper heading hierarchy while doing rewrites or reviews
Kasirye Arthur 3:16 pm on July 3, 2026

I would like to take part in this
Destiny Kanno 11:08 pm on July 5, 2026

I’m all for getting more organized! 🙂

The education handbook is missing.

Quick note here– the education handbook purposefully lives separate from our community docs as it is less about program management and more about orienting others around the programs. It’s officially linked to from wordpress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org//education.

Where do you see the Student Club and WordPress Credits information sitting?
- Aditya Kane 12:57 pm on July 13, 2026
  
  Thanks @piyopiyofox
  To clarify what I meant by “missing”, the education handbook exists and I know it lives at wordpress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org//education.
  
  It’s missing from the community handbooks landing page, which is the page most contributors get linked to from SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/ and email. Someone landing there today has no way to discover the education handbook and its programs exists at all.
  
  I’m not proposing we move it or duplicate it. The simplest solution would be to have jumping-off points: the landing page lists it under “Make Community Team” with a one-line description, linking out to where it already exists.
  
  This way everything under education program continues as is.
  
  On Student Club and WordPress Credits information — whatever admin and program work exists for the community team members – should be in a section of the community team handbooks.
Harmony Romo 6:26 am on July 9, 2026

This is an excellent initiative, and I completely agree that a handbook revamp is needed. There is a lot of information that should be added or updated, and I am more than happy to help in whatever way I can.

A couple thoughts that I had when reading this; currently, there’s no outward facing documentation related to organizing flagship events. I know the planning process has changed in the past year and a half, but there’s still a lot of basic info that would be helpful to document.

There’s also some sponsor specific details that I feel should live in our handbooks related to billing processes or sponsorship agreement preferences, etc.

Looking forward to seeing this project move forward.
- Aditya Kane 12:51 pm on July 13, 2026
  
  @harmonyromo Those are good suggestions. We might need to get more details on what you have in mind for documentation around billing processes and sponsorship agreement preferences.
  
  The flagship events handbook would actually be pretty handy but a lot of the processes are different in different places. Though with SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/ instances being brought into the Making WordPRess Slack – some processes have started to be similar.